The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind...

She continued weeping until the heat of her tear water, the sheer velocity of its flow, finally obscured the already vague circumstances of its origins.

I trust my characters. They know their stories better than I do.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity...

Border crossing’ is a recurrent theme in all aspects of my work — editing, writing, and painting. I’m interested in the various ways artists not only cross borders but also subvert them. In mythology, the...

She was a very funny writer but also a very thoughtful one. She made writers think and she made readers think. She was constantly playing on the difference between God and the writer.

Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough...

my high school must have been built over the mouth of hell.” There are certain things in life that are glorious, and they are glorious for everyone. There are more that are hard, and they...

So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.

Be the CEO of your own career.

You have to be in your middle thirties before you have anything worth saying.

What appears most disquieting to me in isolation is the dilemma of how to use time. There is either too much or too little of it; we either live inside painfully contracting horizons, or feel...

To write a novel, you need an iron butt.

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.

The thing I write will be the thing I write.

Don’t get it right – get it WRITTEN!

In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out – checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how...

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly...

if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write...

[W]hat is one to say of the writer who lies when he writes that he is lying?

If you wish to be a writer– then write, and don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’re on the ‘wrong’ path. You know where you’re going, and each word you write gets you a...

One changes, as a writer, fairly quickly; what you wrote six months or a year ago might not sound right anymore.

If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.

In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul

Novel writing is like heroin addiction; it takes everything you’ve got.

I hoped at first to find a rather more direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if they really had such a comprehension, it must be confessed they did not...

Don’t write to sell, write to tell.

But I think Cybil was my biggest fan. She cut out my articles and hung them in her locker and we were always cracking up how if you wrote the simplest, most obvious thing in...

Inspiration means breathing in. Breathing in God.

Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.

Never give your opinion on someone’s writing unless they ask sincerely, and never ask for someone’s opinion unless you’re sincere.

The trap I remember forever: how they got out I have long since forgotten.

There is more to writing than playing with words.

He found solace in what he wrote. It was an attempt to discover who he was at the moment.

(2002) In Rome, month upon month, I struggled with how to structure the book about my father (He already had the water, he just had to discover jars). At one point I laid each chapter...

doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating...

I was born with the ability to see in metaphor.

The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did’st by my side remain,Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad exposed to public view,Made thee in...

Why write about the past? Well, there’s more of it.

Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument....

If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.

Sometimes writing is like playing with fire… like trying to tame an uncontrollable beast.

Writing fiction is one of the greatest forms of empathy. It’s not enough to simply write from the perspective of your characters…you have to feel what they feel.

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose...

Write until your fingers break. It may be the cure for everything.

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere. While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual,...

These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that...

I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being concious of living.